Statement by Matthias Steingass. “Coincidentally I have been at a book presentation and discussion yesterday in Frankfurt/Main: It was about Achim Szepanski’s “Kapitalisierung – Marx’ Non-Ökonomie“. As I understand, Achim comes very much from this Deleuzeian side of view. He tries to reestablish an economic view on capitalism whereas he criticizes a lot of other Marxists of “going cultural” (Zizek for example) instead of analyzing how in fact the economy works via capital. The important point here is “the unit of capital”. It is not so much about commodification as it is about capitalization – “through one measure or ‘territory’ (of capital).” Hereby the main question is how value in the first place arises. This question of the transformation of a commodity into a value is unsolved because there is no point in history where it was ‘invented’ – saying it was invented leads us into the same vicious circle as the one I tried to describe above. To evade this I am forced at some point to axiomate the process (there is a certain meaning in Longchenpa). Szenpanski axiomates at the point where he says: There is capital (and not: there is commodity (and fetishism)). The problem of understanding what capital does (giving value ex nihilo) is further complicated in that it more and is working under an a-semiotic regime which isn’t representational anymore. Capital more and more is working through algorithms (programming languages, derivate generation via mathematics; say: general quantification, what Heidegger named Gestell). From this axiom we can begin to understand in an a-cultural non-cultural way (culture being in itself already a transcendentally over-determined notion and as such ready for exchange) how capital generates a certain superstructure – culture, a certain subject – as a base. This base is as an axiom capital, which is the Real in the Laruelleian sense (in this case) of which we as subject and individuals are unilateral effects – strangers. One other effect of this Real is risk production as an effect of the a-semiotic mathem under which capital is ruled (capital already as thinking along the Real and the mathem as already further unfolding structures from the axiomatization). Any revolutionary move – anything new – and anything potentially threatening already becomes discounted under this rule and thereby any counter move against capitalism is exchanged into a further strengthening of it.

The point was about the terror reign of exchange. As the citation says exchange has to sides, a positive and a negative. This means in our case, there can be an “untimely” effect if we “deterritorialize” or “clone” (are these exchangeable?). So I think apart from writing as an act of learning, as I said above, the question has to be how to write/clone to be(come) untimely. Maybe this would become effective knowledge in as it would trigger other peoples interest. But the even bigger problem is: how to become more than anti-capitalist? If indeed capital has the function of risk production everything anti-capitalist becomes super food for capitalism.”